On Saturday evening, the Denver Nuggets suffered one of their more crushing losses of the season with an overtime road defeat at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers. The Nuggets appeared to have this game wrapped up toward the end of regulation, but Lakers guard Austin Reaves engineered a perfectly executed missed free throw, which he then rebounded and scored to tie the game.
After the game, Nuggets head coach David Adelman gave his account of what happened on the play.
“That's just one of those things that's one in 100 in the NBA,” said Adelman, per Bennett Durando of the Denver Post on X, formerly Twitter. “It happened. You give them credit. But there were so many things that led up to that that we could have done differently, maybe better.”
Some criticized the Nuggets for not having a fourth player along the lane to get in on the rebounding action for Reaves' second free throw, which ended up careening right to the vacant area of the paint, where another Denver player could have been positioned, if they had so chosen.
The loss to Los Angeles will likely erase the good vibes from Denver's recent solid road win over the San Antonio Spurs, albeit without Victor Wembanyama.
It was a particularly brutal game for shooting guard Jamal Murray, who scored just five points and fouled out of the contest, a full 180 from his usual dominance against the Lakers in recent years.
The Nuggets currently sit at 41-27, and are just a game and a half over the Phoenix Suns to avoid the play-in tournament in the Western Conference.
The Nuggets now have a couple of days off before they next hit the floor on Tuesday evening at home against the Philadelphia 76ers.
